Took my car to my "Mechanic" and he told me that he couldn't read the mileage with the Volvo scanner or the OBDII scanner he has because "its not updated". Anyways, I was talking to him about getting the mileage because it was important to me that I fix it, he responded with "Oh you give me $90 and I get the parts, another $85 and I fix for you". I then told him that I wanted to get the correct mileage so that when/if I ever sell the car I'm not ripping them off.

He then told me that he wanted to just keep the mileage at 62k, he said "It better this way, show you have low miles and we make odometer work again".

My question is isn't this super illegal? I looked at him in the eye and told him that I wanted to be honest and not lie about the mileage. If it's illegal who can I report him too? I had some work done with him recently and he told me that he cleaned out the PVC and that my "Breather box" was completely clogged. The funny thing is that I was down there because the turbo gauge hose was broken from his mechanic messing with it last time and he tried to hide it. When I told him about him needing to disconnect that he said "Oh we never even took off the manifold, we just cleaned the top PVC on the top of the motor. Needless to say I either got ripped off and he's full of crap, or he said that they didn't clean under the intake manifold to avoid saying that it was his mechanics sloppy work. I don't trust this guy and he's already shown me that he doesn't really have strong work ethics with the sloppy work plus the lying about the mileage.

I told him that I wanted to do the repairs myself and he told me to go to the pick n pull to get a replacement, denying the idea that his mechanic is the one who clearly broke my vacuum tree. I ordered a new vacuum tree + O ring from a auto parts site for $11 and I'm just going to start doing the work I need to do on my own. I'm most likely going to invest in taking some extra courses at my college for auto repair.

What I would like to know is if anyone knows a sure way of getting the accurate mileage from an 850 and who/how I should report this guy for trying to do something that is illegal, that is, if I find out it actually IS illegal.

Thanks guys, sorry for the wall of text. It's been an interesting day.

 

Hey man, first of all, don't even bother going back to a mechanic that you don't trust.

Secondly, most states actually omit the odo readings of cars that are older than 10 years old so, there is likely no recourse.

As for the actual miles, if the car is a '95 or older, you can read the mileage yourself. If it's a '96 or newer, very few dealers can read the mileage. On another note, when I did mine, it was only about 2,200 miles off and it was a lot of work getting it corrected. I can not image if it was more than 5,000 miles off. Phew!

If you want to do your own repairs, look in the DIY thread. There are a lot of repair instructions in there. Also, if you post a question about something that you do not understand, people on this forum or www.MatthewsVolvoSite.com will help you through it.

Oh, before I forget, my odo reads 213,120 but Saturday it will read 113,456 because I got a replacement cluster. LOL

 

Damn, mine is a 1996. That's unfortunate. Do you know how much it costs to get it read? Also, I've seen a few threads on how to tackle the ODO job yourself and it seems pretty straight forward, most likely a messed up gear that I can get for ~$9.

I just really wish I knew of a way to get an accurate reading of the mileage, you would think there would be an easier way. :/

 

Call your dealer. I have heard that they can't even read the '96 and '97 models. You can check and see.

When I did my first gear change the car had 102,000 when it went out. I replaced the gear 2 months later and though I put about 3,000 on the car. When I checked the mileage, I had driven about 7,400 miles. Wow!!! So I documented the difference in the owners manual and told the lady that purchased the car from me months later.

When we purchased the S70 that my daugher has, the odo read 82,500 but the autocheck report read 123,000 two years prior. So I called Volvo and they verified that the car had a warranty repair at 121,000. So the current owner replaced the cluster with one with lower mileage to try to get more money for it. It is a very clean car and had a new head on it. It has about 172,000 now but the odo is about 43,560 miles off from what I can tell. I figured the car had 17,000 miles on it over the 123,000 from the autocheck report. The car is a '98 and we purchased it in '09 so it was 11 years old. The DMV gave us a title that reads "mileage exempt". All of my titles say that. I have asked them nicely to put the miles on the title and they just ignore me.

When I get my cluster in tomorrow, I'll change out the odo so the newer cluster will read the correct 213,200. I'm like you, I'd rather the cluster was correct.

Other than all of that, here is an attempt to hack into the OBD-II to get the mileage.
http://www.matthewsvolvosite.com/for...hp?f=1&t=28138

 

For anyone else who is looking for the solution, I believe I found a way.

http://www.matthewsvolvosite.com/for...43723&p=212426

By Jimmy57:

I have a VST and I am pretty sure I have read milage on Diagnose2 850's. I haven't tried on a 96-97 850 in a long time as that doesn't come up as request and I don't know when I will have one to try it on again.

addendum: I just went out to my 98 and used the VST. I selected the car as a "800 SERIES" and then went through some of the other system menus to be sure the VST was displaying menus for 850's and not S/V70 models just in case the tool overrode menu selections when hooked to a car not specified.
I selected "ELECTRICAL" then "COMBI" and then "PROGRAM COMBI" and on the menu was "READ COMBI"
In that menu were several things like "MANIPULATED=YES", should be no but when the ABS module croaks and VSS is lost this changes from NO to YES.
I went down a few lines and there was MILAG=167407. My odo shows 167243.

If you go to "MONITOR TEST" menu you get a whole other list of parameters and milage is not in

By Ero1:

Well Hallelujah !!! I called one more dealer about an hour away and the guy I talked to in service said sure, he could read that info for me! I told him what the other dealers had said and he said well they used to think that but now know better. So anyway he says definitely can read the mileage on a 1996 OBDII. Will charge $40.00, but so far he is the only one I have found who knows how. Hopefully in a couple of days I will have that info and can tackle my odometer repair. My car shows 133,375 now....hope it doesn't show too much higher!

Later posted:

Ok...got my true mileage...149,766..so I am happy. I was afraid it would be higher. Anyway, I showed the tech what jimmy57 had written and asked if that was how they did it, and he said that was exactly the same. So for anyone who wants to know how to read your mileage, find someone with a Volvo Scan Tool and follow what is written above.
Next project: fix odometer, hopefully this afternoon!

So it looks like the challenge is finding a VERY GOOD Volvo specialist with a Volvo Scan Tool. From what I've researched it IS possible to get the accurate mileage from a 1996 Volvo, but it is tricky and requires someone very familiar with VST to get it.

 

Nice, I may link this thread to the '93 - '95 mileage thread as a reference.